A roofing business plan has to show what the company will cost to open and run through its first year, and which lead sources will bring the signed jobs that pay for it. The free template below follows the SBA’s eight-section business plan, with the lines a roofing company needs added to each section.
License and insurance costs change by state and by quote, so the plan adds up the startup total from your own numbers. Starting a Roofing Company: What It Costs and How to Land the First Jobs covers the license and insurance rules in Texas, Florida and California.
Write the full eight-section plan when a lender will read it
The SBA says its traditional plan suits an owner who plans to request financing from traditional sources or who wants a comprehensive plan. Its lean startup plan suits an owner who wants to start quickly, whose business is relatively simple, or who plans to change and refine the plan regularly.
For the lean version, write a few lines in each of sections 3 through 6 and section 8 below, and skip the rest.
Copy this template and fill each line with your own numbers
Write the executive summary last, since it pulls its numbers from sections 7 and 8.
1. Executive summary
- The company in two sentences: who owns it and what roofing it sells in which towns.
- Startup cost and first-year operating cost, carried from section 8.
- The funding you’re asking for, if any, carried from section 7.
- The month you expect to pay yourself a full salary.
2. Company description
- Legal name, entity type, EIN and each owner’s share.
- License: your state license number, or the qualifier whose license you’ll work under and what they charge. One Florida owner on r/Roofing reported paying qualifiers anywhere from $2,000 a month to $500 per completed job.
- Texas has no state roofing license as of October 2026. The voluntary RCAT license requires two years as a principal of a Texas roofing company, so its $550 to $1,050 fee goes in the year-three budget.
- Where you work from. Google tells a service-area business run from home to hide its address, and it won’t accept a virtual office or a remote mailbox as an address, so leave that cost out.
3. Market analysis
- The towns your trucks will drive to.
- Your expected mix of retail replacements, insurance work, repairs and commercial jobs.
- The months of storm season where you work.
- The roofers who show up on Google Maps when you search your main service in your town, with their review counts.
4. Organization and management
- Who sells, who runs production, who answers the phone and who keeps the books.
- Your own crews or sub crews, and what each costs per square.
- Fall protection for everyone on the roof. It was OSHA’s most cited standard in fiscal 2025, so put the gear in the startup table.
5. Services and pricing
- Each service with its price per square and target margin. How to Price a Roof: Price per Square, Overhead and Target Margin walks through the math.
- The workmanship warranty you’ll offer, in years.
6. Marketing and sales
- Each lead source with its monthly cost and the inspections and signed jobs you expect from it.
- A review request at the close of every job. Google says “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.” It judges how well-known a business is partly by “how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have.” A new company can start collecting reviews on its first job.
- Your state’s rules on insurance work. Texas bans offering to waive, rebate or absorb a policyholder’s deductible, and a roofer doing the work can’t also act as public adjuster on the claim.
- Florida bars offering homeowners anything of value for a roof inspection or a claim, with fines up to $10,000 per violation. Keep gift cards for booked inspections out of a Florida plan.
7. Funding request
- The amount, what it buys, the term and the monthly payment.
- SBA microloans go up to $50,000 through intermediary lenders the SBA funds, and the SBA puts the average at about $13,000.
- Microloans run up to seven years at rates the SBA says are generally between 8% and 13%. The money can cover equipment, supplies, inventory and working capital, but not existing debt or real estate.
8. Financial projections
- Monthly expenses. The SBA’s startup cost guide advises counting “at least one year of monthly expenses, but counting five years is ideal.”
- Forecast income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements covering five years, the outlook the SBA’s traditional plan asks for.
- Startup costs, from this table:
| Startup line | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|
| EIN | $0. The IRS says “You never have to pay a fee for an EIN” and warns about websites that charge for one. |
| License, bond or qualifier | Your state board. California requires a $25,000 bond before it issues a license. |
| General liability and workers’ comp | Written quotes from two brokers |
| Lawyer and accountant | Their quotes for setup and the first year |
| Fall protection gear and tools | Your supplier’s quote |
| Website | Your web builder’s quote |
| Lead sources until signed jobs cover them | Section 6, month by month |
| Working capital | The monthly expenses above |
Insurance quotes vary too much to borrow anyone else’s number
Two new roofers posted their general liability quotes on r/Roofing. One got quotes from $1,200 to $4,500 a year, and the other was quoted $10,000 a year by Progressive in Dallas. The price moves with the limits you buy and the revenue you report, so put written quotes in the plan and use the higher one.
A general contractor on r/Roofing that subs out its roofing and siding work was told in 2025 that its general liability premium would rise 500% in year three. Ask your broker what the premium is based on before you project years two through five.
Write workers’ comp as a share of payroll, so the line grows with every hire. One owner on r/Roofing wrote that new roofers end up with an employee-leasing company (a PEO), paying 8 to 9% of payroll for comp plus about 10% on top.
In Texas, most private employers can choose whether to carry comp, though one that goes without must report that to the state. California requires roofing contractors to carry comp or hold a self-insurance certificate “whether or not they have employees.” Price comp even where it’s optional, because contracts and general contractors can still ask for proof of coverage.
Assume each signed job costs more to win in year one
An owner on r/Roofing described the early stage this way: “your cost of customer acquisition is high, close rate and margins are lower.” Another owner said word-of-mouth appointments started rising after 6 to 7 months, which is about when the business turned modestly profitable. Run the early months of the projections on paid lead sources, and add referral jobs only once they start coming in.
Price each paid lead source in your own market. In Dallas-Fort Worth, where I’m based, plan on around $1,400 a month at minimum for Google’s Local Services Ads as of October 2026. A DFW roofer we work with was paying about $109 a lead in late September. Set each source’s monthly cost against the inspections and signed jobs it brings in.
A post on r/RoofingSales described an owner who spent $20,000 on shirts, jackets and hats and $15,000 on business cards in year one. Give branded gear and printing their own capped lines, so they can’t eat into the lead-source budget.
Put your own pay and your taxes on separate lines
Roofers’ median wage was $55,440 a year in May 2025, according to the BLS. That’s roughly what an installer gives up to start a company, so use it as the floor for an owner-pay line that comes out before profit.
If you’re a sole proprietor or the only member of an LLC, the IRS charges self-employment tax of 15.3% on your profit. Anyone with $400 or more in net self-employment earnings files Schedule SE, and the IRS adds that “you may have to file Estimated Taxes quarterly,” so put the tax in the cash flow as quarterly payments. Taxes for a Roofing Company: Sales Tax, Deductions, Quarterly Payments and the Year-End Bill covers the rest of the bill.
Project a good year and a bad year side by side
A roofing coordinator planning a launch in time for hail season asked on r/RoofingSales, “How much money should I expect for a good year vs. a bad year?” Build the projections twice to answer that, once for a storm year and once for a year without one. The bad year still has to cover insurance, loan payments, lead sources and your own pay.
Your plan is ready when it has these lines
- A startup table built from your own quotes, with a license, bond or qualifier line.
- Insurance from written quotes, with workers’ comp as a share of payroll.
- Your state’s insurance-work rules in the sales section.
- Each lead source with its monthly cost and the inspections it should bring.
- Owner pay and self-employment tax, each on its own line.
- A good-year and a bad-year projection, with at least a year of monthly expenses.
Your marketing section counts on homeowners near your office finding you on Google Maps. Once your Google profile is live, run the free Google Maps heatmap: pick your profile and a search, and in a few minutes you’ll see your rank at 49 points around your office.